The watershed of the Yellow River is an important water conservation area in the Yellow River Basin. Its fragile ecological environment, climate change and unreasonable human activities have led to the continuous degradation of plant community structure in the watershed. This study only considers environmental factors, based on MaxEnt, Garp and other niche models and spatial-temporal analysis methods such as Mess and MoD analysis, to explore the suitable areas of Salix oritrepha Schneid. (First published in C.S.Sargent, Pl. Wilson. 3: 113 (1916)) and Picea crassifolia Kom. (First published in Bot. Mater. Gerb. Glavn. Bot. Sada R.S.F.S.R. 4: 177 (1923)) in the watershed of the Yellow River under different emission scenarios in the future. The results show that the MaxEnt model has a good simulation effect. In terms of spatial distribution, the suitable areas of the two species are mainly concentrated in the southeastern part of the Yellow River source area. Compared with the current period (1970–2000), by 2070, the suitable areas of the two species in each scenario showed a distribution of high in the east and low in the west, with an obvious expansion trend in the area and moving to high altitude and high latitude. According to the analysis of Mess and MoD, the annual average temperature (Bio_1) may be the most important variable affecting the future distribution of the two vegetation types.